


Write Drunk, Edit Sober

by sydkn3e



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Eye Sex, Love at First Sight, M/M, Musician Dean, Writer Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-05 13:52:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10309586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sydkn3e/pseuds/sydkn3e
Summary: Musician!Dean and Writer!Cas AU





	

Cas plopped down in the splintered wooden chair, depositing his jacket in the empty chair next to him. He clicked his pen and flipped the pages of his notebook, opening it to the current spot in his work. He barely registered the rock band playing some cover of Garth Brooks in the background, which actually sounded pretty decent considering they were playing in one of the worst dive bars of Lynchburg, Virginia.

"What can I get ya, hon?" 

A middle-aged waitress with teased blonde hair, dark red lipstick, and pale blue eye shadow looked down at him, tapping the end of her pen impatiently on a small notepad, looking thoroughly unamused. Cas recognized her as the waitress who served him most nights he frequented the bar, although he had yet to catch her name. Or perhaps he had, and he'd just been too juiced to remember.

"What? Oh. Uh..." Cas glanced nervously over the drink menu. "Ah...a tall Blue Moon'll be fine."

"Great. Be right up." She snapped her book closed and stalked off.

Cas lowered his eyes back to his own notebook, glancing over his messy scrawl as he contemplated the direction in which to take his story. A new song started, and Cas rolled his eyes as electric guitar replaced acoustic and a raspy, growling voice crooned "House of the Rising Sun" into the static of the microphone and over the hum of voices in the dimly lit bar. So much for some peace and quiet.

He immersed himself in his work, stopping momentarily every few minutes to chew absentmindedly on the tip of his pen as he considered his next few lines, blissfully unaware of everything going on around him. The usual people populated the bar, most of them avoiding their own dreadfully boring realities, drowning the mediocrity of the real lives in copious amounts of alcohol. Cas, too, was a regular at this particular bar. He had adopted the stereotype of drunken writer long ago, and at this point of his life he didn't care how his inspiration came, as long as it did. He always had the most luck at this particular shitty dive bar, writing until long after closing time as the pathetic fools around him drank themselves silly and wallowed miserably in a large cloud of cigarette smoke, at the end of the night going home to their husbands, wives, and children smelling of sweat and regret.

Cas didn't have that kind of life. At the end of his night, he went home to an empty apartment that smelled eerily reminiscent to the bar he sat in every evening.

There usually wasn't this much noise, though.

He cut his eyes over at the band, who had just started a familiar perky tune, one he actually liked. The singer strummed carelessly along the strings of his guitar, looking like he was straight out of _West Side Story_ with his spiked hair and black leather jacket. Cas was sure he'd seen him in here before, but he couldn't recall a particular time. There was alcohol to thank for that.

_"This thing, called love, I just can't handle it..."_

Cas hesitated momentarily, watching the man swing his arm over and over on the strings of the guitar. The man smiled as he sang, the boyish grin making him look young and carefree. The smile was infectious, and before Cas realized it, he was smiling as well. Then the man turned his direction, and before Cas could look away, his bright green eyes were on him, and he continued to sing, his smile growing wider as he held Cas's eyes with his own, an inexplicable static force drawing his electric blue to the intense green.

_"I kinda like it, crazy little thing called love..."_

Cas peeled his gaze away and cast his eyes downward, blush creeping up his cheeks. He frowned, feeling silly for the knee-jerk reaction. The band continued to play, and Cas made a conscious effort to avoid looking back up at the musician. He failed twice more, and both times he let his eyes travel upward at the band, the singer's eyes were on him, and he grinned widely each time they made contact with Cas's.

Cas had become immersed in his writing when his waitress plopped a glass of brown liquid down in front of him.

Cas looked up from his notebook and stared at it a moment before raising his eyes to the waitress.

"I didn't order this."

" _He_ did." She pointed a finger at the band's singer, who for once wasn't paying attention to Cas's corner of the bar.

Cas scoffed. "Well, I don't want it."

"Listen, sweetie, it's already paid for and I can't do a damn thing with it now. Just drink it. Don't be a dick." She turned on her heel and stomped off.

Cas narrowed his eyes after her and looked back down at the drink. Carbonation bubbles rose to the top, letting Cas know it was partially made up of some kind of soda. Probably a mixer. Cas didn't do mixers. As far as he was concerned, the more things a drink was mixed with, the less alcohol he was able to ingest for the money. He was a struggling writer, after all.

Not to mention that he wasn't in the habit of accepting drinks from strangers.

He pushed the glass away in disgust and went back to his writing, letting condensation gather and roll down the glass, seeping into the unfinished wood of the table.

Cas immersed himself so deeply in his novel that he didn't even register when the band stopped playing and the bar took on its usual monotonous hum of drunken men mumbling about sports and women. 

"Huh."

Cas snapped his up to find the green-eyed singer across the table from him pulling out a chair, the wood scraping noisily against the concrete floor. He had full lips, one side quirked up in the corner in a half smile, and light freckles peppered his cheeks, nose, and forehead. The playfulness in his eyes made him look like a mischievous teenager, but the hard lines in his face suggested he was in his late thirties, at least.

"Pegged you for a rum 'n coke guy. Guess I was wrong."

Cas eyes darted to the untouched and watered-down drink in front of him, then back to the man, who was now sitting across from him with a glass of amber-colored liquid in hand.

"Yeah. Guess you were." He glared at the man, who arched an eyebrow high on his forehead and huffed a laugh. 

Cas dropped his eyes back to his notebook and began scribbling again, eager to get his current idea out on paper before the haze from the alcohol chased it away. 

"So." The man started again, his mouth forming a small _O_ at the end of the word. "Whatcha workin' on, there?"

"None of your fuckin' business." Cas spat, never looking up from his work.

"Well, yeah, I know that. But I figr'd you might tell me anyhow." 

Cas looked up in time to see the man drain his glass, the ice clinking together as he sat it back down on the table. He began digging in the pockets of the leather jacket, still watching Cas with raised eyebrows, waiting for him to speak. He really was attractive, the beautiful green of his eyes shrouded with long, black eyelashes, his short brown hair spiked a little in the front, and week-old stubble adorning his cheeks and neck.

"It's a novel."

The man pulled out a pack of menthol cigarettes and began patting himself down for a lighter, finding one in his chest pocket and lighting one. The mint and smoke smell wafted across the table and into Cas's nostrils, and he inhaled deeply, enjoying the scent. 

"Oh yeah? Huh." He held the cigarette between his teeth as he spoke, muffling his words a bit, then inhaled sharply and pulled the cigarette out, holding it between his fingers as he sucked the smoke deep into his lungs. "'Bout what?" He blew the smoke out of the side of his mouth, away from Cas.

Cas took a few gulps of his beer, watching the man across from him warily, the cigarette's cherry burning bright through the thick cloud of smoke between them.

"I'm not telling you that."

The man smiled and sat back in his chair, his hands resting on his thighs and cigarette dangling lazily from his lips. "Why not?"

"Because I don't know you."

The man pinched his cigarette between two fingers and pulled it from between his lips, blowing a gust of smoke into the cloudy haze, looking at Cas through his long eyelashes. "Dean."

"What?"

The man leaned forward, resting his forearms on the shoddy table. "Name's Dean." He smiled widely again, eyes never leaving Cas as he raised the cigarette back to his lips and took another long pull.

Cas nodded. "Right, then."

Dean laughed heartily, his eyes crinkling in the corners, smoke billowing out of his mouth and nose. "So you gonna tell me yours?"

Cas shrugged. "I hardly see the point."

Dean laughed again, and Cas glared at him.

"Well." Dean cleared his throat, then pulled his empty glass over to him and tapped the cigarette on the rim, depositing ash into the melting ice. "Friends typically know each other's names."

"We're not friends."

"Not yet."

Cas narrowed his eyes at Dean, his hand still grasping his pen, hovering over the pages of his notebook. Dean raised his eyebrows again, his cigarette poised at his lips which were twisted into an amused smirk. He wasn't going to let it go. Cas sighed.

"It's Castiel."

Dean looked thoughtful, chewing lightly on the butt of his cigarette. "So...Cas."

Cas frowned. "No. Castiel."

"Hmmmm..." Dean pursed his lips playfully, took a pull off his cigarette, then smiled, blowing smoke out through his teeth. "Well, I'm gonna call you Cas."

Cas rolled his eyes. "Whatever."

Dean chuckled and stubbed his cigarette out in his empty glass, the cherry hissing as it made contact with the liquid. He ran a hand down his face, his calloused fingers scratching over the stubble on his jaw.

"So Cas, when are you gonna let me take you out?"

Cas scoffed in disbelief. "Excuse me?"

Dean watched him with interest, his arms crossed and resting on the wooden tabletop, his eyes twinkling with silent laughter from a joke of which Castiel was unaware. He shrugged.

"Y'know, out. On a date."

Cas frowned, his shoulders tensing with anger as the realization of Dean's cockiness hit him.

"That's presumptuous of you." Cas spat, clenching one fist and digging his blunt nails into the palm of his hand.

"Hardly."

"How do you figure?" Cas's fingers grasped his pen tightly, the whites of his knuckles showing.

Dean grinned his toothy grin again and flipped open his cigarette pack, placing another menthol between his teeth. He lit it and took a long pull before blowing a large puff of smoke up towards the ceiling.

"Dunno. This just feels different." He clicked his tongue once, gauging Cas's reaction. When Cas said nothing, he continued. "I've seen you in here before, you know. You're in here most nights, yeah? Scribbling away in that notebook?"

Cas nodded once, narrowing his eyes into an intrigued squint.

Dean nodded, his tongue resting behind his top teeth, lips slightly parted. "Yeah. I've seen you here, a lot. Enough to know that you draw circles on the table with your finger when you're thinking, and that you prefer to sit at this table..." he laid his palms on the tabletop, then pointed to Cas, "in that chair, so that you can see the rest of the people in the bar, even though you never pay attention to any of them. I know that you have a habit of running your hand over your mouth when you're flustered. I've watched you enough to know that you hate the distraction of music when you write, although you always seen to enjoy a little Queen." He gave a small wink.

Cas let his eyes drop to his work, and he began fiddling with the pen in his hands.

"And that you always do that..." Dean gestured to Cas's hands fiddling with his pen, "when you don't know what to say. I assume it works the same way with writing too, huh?" He drew on his cigarette.

Cas huffed and dropped the pen to his notebook. 

"Is there a point to all this, _Dean_?" He asked sarcastically.

"My point is, all these weird little quirks you have, these things that normal people have probably never noticed about you..." Dean's elbow was propped up on the table, and he thumbed at the cigarette in that hand, "I can't get them out of my head."

Cas watched him warily, waiting for him to break out in laughter at any second to indicate his insincerity. Instead his face was hard and serious, the laugh lines etched into the corners of his eyes like creases on a map. His eyebrows were slightly raised while he waited to Cas to speak. His perfect lips were drawn into a sort of unintentional pout, and his green eyes shone brightly even in the low light of the bar. 

And there was the static again, as impossibly green met mesmerizing blue, causing goose bumps to rise on his arms and the back of his neck. A noiseless humming current pulsed between them, blocking out the noise of the rest of the bar. For a second, Cas considered how easy it would be to lean over the small table and press their lips together.

But he didn't.

"You're wrong." He whispered, eyes still trained on green.

Dean cocked an eyebrow, surprised. "Yeah? 'Bout what?"

"I do pay attention to the people in the bar." 

"Huh." Another drag of his cigarette.

Cas pointed to a skinny brunette on a bar stool who wore a bright red dress, the kind that was way too flashy for this type of bar. Her nails were the same shade of red, beautifully manicured, and she fingered them along the stem of a martini glass, staring longingly across the bar.

"See her?"

Dean turned to look, then nodded, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

"That's Madalene. She comes in every Thursday night, wears the same dress, orders the same dry vodka martini with an onion instead of an olive, and sits at that same bar stool until closing time. 'Cause see Madalene...she lost her husband two years ago in a car accident. And she met him here, at this bar, when she came in from out of town one night with her girlfriends, just by chance, and he introduced himself over the dry vodka martini that he ordered for her....with an onion. Except...Madelene hates onions. She leaves it on her napkin each night, even makes a face whenever she takes a sip, but never orders it without. Because what's the point in remembering lost love if you don't remember it exactly the way it happened?"

"Hmmm." Dean let his tongue come to rest behind his teeth again.

"Frankie over there..." Cas gestured to a tall, stocky blonde wearing a polo and khakis, "he's a senior at Liberty University. Quarterback of the Liberty Flames football team, your average All-American male with everything going for him...brains, looks, women..." Cas leaned closer to whisper, reveling in the menthol smoke the clung to the space around them, "and he's closeted queer. So he comes here to hook up with guys too drunk to care about the difference. He comes here, because God forbid a fag at the most Christian university in the country go anywhere where his crowd may see him." Cas shook his head. "But they won't find him here. Won't venture close enough to those of us who actually need help from the good Lord. Who the fuck's idea was it to call them the Flames, anyway?" Cas scoffed, clearly amused. 

Dean took another long pull of his cigarette, his mouth quirked up into a small smile.

"And there?" Cas pointed to the far end of the bar at a middle-aged man in an over-sized parka slouched over his table, several empty glasses of beer scattered across his table. "That's Dane. His mom is his only surviving family, and she has Alzheimer's. It's gotten really bad. So Dane spends his nights here, drinking until he can't see straight, and then drinking some more. He drinks until he can't remember his own name, attempting to recreate the feeling he gets from her every night when she forgets who he is."

Dean was silent, watching Cas speak with modest interest.

Cas flicked his eyes back to Dean's, whose eyes were softer, more serious. The magnetic pull began again, only this time, he didn't mind as much.

Cas ran a finger down the length of his pen, his eyes unwavering. "So yeah, I pay attention." He pointed gently to his notebook, tapping a finger on the top page.

Dean hummed low in his throat and gave a small smile.

"So you write about all these people."

"Hmm." Cas took a sip of his now warm beer, then made a face. "Most of them, yeah. In some form."

Dean raised his head as if he was taking in this information, and he ran his tongue over his bottom lip thoughtfully. He ashed his cigarette in his glass again before taking another pull.

"What about me?"

Cas squinted at him again. "You mean, what's your story?"

Dean simply nodded, blowing out a cloud of smoke and stubbing out his half-smoked cigarette before clasping his hands together in front of him and resting them on the tabletop.

Cas furrowed his brow, thinking, and he sat back in his chair.

"Someone who's very confident in himself...who isn't used to people turning him down. Someone who got used to unemotional attachment and that's all he's ever known, so he has a hard time expressing genuine feelings other than cocky one-liners and flirtations." Cas mouth twitched slightly, threatening a smile. He leaned forward over the table, into Dean's space, and Dean visibly tensed, his breath hitching a little, his eyes flitting back and forth over Cas's features.

"Someone who's had to be so strong for so long..." Cas continued, "who's trying to learn what it feels like to be vulnerable for a change, even when it makes him uncomfortable. So he seeks out people who are equally vulnerable, in their own way. Someone who's maybe gone through similar experiences and also needs someone to open up to. He's someone who doesn't trust easily, doesn't love easily...but he's finally willing to try, because there's always been that little.... _something_ missing and he's determined to figure out what it is in this life that makes people decide it's worth living."

Dean gulped silently, his Adam's apple bobbing under the blanket of stubble.

"Someone who likes to play it safe...but is _finally_ putting himself on the line for something he truly wants, because he doesn't want to know what it'll feel like if he doesn't at least try."

Dean's face relaxed and his gaze held once more on Cas's, looking peaceful.

Cas sat back again, breaking some of the tension between them due to the close proximity.

"So? How'd I do?"

Dean gave a small smile and cleared his throat. He began to reach a hand across the table, then seemed to think better of it, and dropped it in front of him, spreading his fingers across the marred wood.

"I think I'll have to start spending more time in this dump. Sometimes you can find the most beautiful things in the oddest of places."

Cas gave a gummy smile then actually laughed, his perfect teeth gleaming, his nose wrinkling and eyes crinkling in the process. He reached down and placed a hand gently over Dean's, running a pointer finger lightly over the back of his hand.

Dean huffed a laugh too, staring in disbelief down at their hands joined on the table, then looked back up into Cas's eyes, the deepest blue he'd ever been fortunate enough to see.

"So what _are_ you writing about, anyway?" He relished the feel of Cas's hand over his, an electric current pulsing through his veins.

Cas's eyes lit up, blazing into Dean's, and he smiled shyly...and Dean knew at that moment that this would be the first of many conversations with Castiel, the writer.

"Soulmates." He said softly, dropping his gaze to their hands on the table.

Dean watched Cas earnestly...his messy black hair falling down over his forehead, his face covered with unruly dark stubble, his gummy smile and white teeth, the way his nose wrinkled when he laughed... _really_ laughed...and the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled, the blue of his pupils sparkling with life.

He scoffed, smiling, his tongue coming to rest behind his teeth as he stared across the table at all his hopes for the future.

"Well I'll be damned."


End file.
